“There comes papa from the mill,” cried Effie, looking out of the window; “let’s run down and see him. How surprised he will be to find mamma gone, and Agnes here!” Mr. Wharton came in with his usual cheerful manner; and soon as he was warming his feet by the fire, he had Agnes on one knee, and Harry on the other, and the rest of the noisy little tribe round him, eagerly telling the events of the day, and the pleasant anticipations for the afternoon. “Oh, papa,” said Effie, “I’ve got something I want to say to you, if you would only come in the other room a few minutes, or if the children would only be kind enough to go out of this room a little while.” “Won’t it keep, Effie, till I warm my feet?” asked her father; “because, if it will not, I suppose I must go now.” “Oh no, papa, I will wait patiently,” said Effie. In a few minutes her father said, “Now, Effie, for that important secret;” and they went together into another room. “This is what I wanted to say, papa,” said Effie: “you know poor Agnes never has any money of her own; and I know, when she sees us all giving presents to each other, she will feel badly, if she cannot give something too; and I want to know if you won’t give her a little money, and let her go to the village with us the next time we go, and get some materials to make something out of?” Mr. Wharton answered by putting his hand in his pocket, and giving Effie some silver for Agnes, with which she went off perfectly happy. And now little Grace put in her curly head, and said, “Effie, when you are through with papa, I’ve got something to say to him too.” The sum and substance of Grace’s communication was this: “she had seen something at a store in the village, with which she was sure her mamma would be perfectly charmed, but she hadn’t _quite_ enough money to purchase it; she only wanted _ten cents_ more.” And she too went off with a smiling face. Emily now came in jingling her keys and called them all to dinner. As soon as possible after dinner, the boys laden with a basket of good things, which Emily had provided for them, started off for the snow palace, one of them carrying the dinner-horn, which was used in the summer, to call the men to the farm-house to their meals. When the entertainment was ready the horn was to sound. In the meantime, the children were sitting around the fire, waiting impatiently for the signal, to call them to the palace of snow. “Cousin Emily,” said Agnes, for she too said “Cousin Emily,” though there was no relationship, in fact, between them, “Cousin Emily, I wish I knew _what_ to read and study. I do want to know something, and I don’t know anything but my Bible, and my little book of hymns. Mammy taught me to read, or I should’nt have known anything at all,” she added sadly.